There are conditions under which even individuals with 20/20 vision need sight augmentation. Such conditions may be brought on by, for example, low light levels, low or no color differentiation between objects in the visual field, or the small size of the object viewed. Individuals with less than optimal vision or with other visual defects, such as retinopathies, also need augmentation to correct for their visual defects.
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of the eye. A portion of the retina responsible for fine detail vision is the macula. One form of visual defect is AMD, or age-related macular degeneration. In macular degeneration, which begins with the deposit of druesends in layers beneath the photoreceptors, the degenerative process affects mostly the macula and results in death of cells necessary for vision. In some patents, the result of macular degeneration is a central visual field blind-spot or scotoma. At this time there is no cure for AMD. Other diseases (such as, but not only, diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, macular edema, and optic nerve atrophy) can also result in significant losses in vision, sometimes macular, sometimes peripheral, to this region of high quality vision. Furthermore, the diseases' impact on vision is unique for each patient. What these vision losses have in common is the loss in quality of life due to the reduced quality of vision.
There have been attempts to augment the quality of the perceived visual field using such items as image intensity amplifiers, or “night scopes”, or mechanical or electrical image magnifiers. These devices tend to be big, bulky, limited in their application, and not appropriate for non-military or paramilitary uses.
What is needed then is a general device that is capable of augmenting an image to be viewed by an individual, whatever the source of the image, be it a computer display, a television or other image source, under the command of that individual, to aid the individual in poor viewing conditions or to overcome physiological and psychological visual defects in the individual. The present invention addresses this need.